Edition Standards
Last updated on January 7, 2025
GuideCovers
Preferred file type for cover images
PNG and JPEG work the best. Webp files are not currently supported. The cover shouldn’t have any transparency to it. The image is converted to a webp file before we show it regardless of what you upload.
Preferred file size
The larger the cover the better! If you want to upload a 15mb file, go for it. We’ll resize it down and show a smaller version everywhere.
The covers we show on Hardcover (as of March 22, 2024) max out at 200px wide by 300px high. Any smaller than that and we’ll show a blurry image due to resizing it up. Any covers you upload to Hardcover should be at least 300px wide by 450px high.
What dimensions qualify for red, yellow and green?
We show three different quality scores for covers today. This is calculated using height x width.
0 - 32,999: Bad Quality (ex 133 x 200)
33,000 - 99,999: Ok Quality (ex: 200 x 300)
100,000 +: Good Quality (ex: 300 x 450)
We’d like to start showing larger covers on the book page, which will require more covers in the Great Quality range.
Contributors
Order of Listing Edition Contributors
Add the primary authors in the same order as they appear on the cover of the book. Additional contributors (editors, illustrators, etc) can be added in any order.
Anthologies with Multiple Authors
For works containing numerous authors, such as anthologies of short stories, all contributing authors should be listed under the author role.
Examples:
Unbound, published by Grim Oak Press shows the Author as “Multiple” and lists the Authors and their contributed works in the description.
In this case, all 23 of the contributing authors should be listed as an Author on the edition.
Publishing Information
Publisher Name
List the name of the company that published this edition.
Authors self-publishing under their own name should be entered as “Independently Published”. Small companies, including LLCs established by the author that only publish that author’s works, are still have the company name listed.
Do not include commas or periods around business entity acronyms.
Examples:
Julie Carobini -> Indepenently Published
Julie Carobini, LLC -> Julie Carobini LLC
Julie Carobini Inc. -> Julie Carobini Inc
Published Date
List the date of publication for the edition provided by the publisher. It is important that at least one edition of a book have a valid publishing date for proper book display in series or other places. Hardcover will automatically select the earliest publication date for display on the book.
If a specific date of publishing does not exist or cannot be found, list the date as Jan 1 of that year. If a month but not day is available, list it as the first day of that month: 1/1/year